


A New Dawn for Me

by thepinupchemist



Category: Iceman (Comics), Marauders (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:15:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23033065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepinupchemist/pseuds/thepinupchemist
Summary: Christian Frost has a sordid history of mental illness and being tortured behind him. Bobby Drake -- Iceman -- helped his sister Emma rescue him from himself.After Christian figures out who he's been reborn as in the aftermath, he decides he wants Bobby Drake.
Relationships: Bobby Drake/Christian Frost
Comments: 15
Kudos: 61





	A New Dawn for Me

**Author's Note:**

> Talk about obscure ships am I right
> 
> If you are here, I am assuming that you do not know what this is because I am the actual first person to post something for this (canon!) ship. I call this ship Icefrost in my head but I suppose it doesn't matter because I'm the only one on it.
> 
> That said, this is largely a character study of Christian Frost (Emma Frost's older brother), who unjustly has only 15 comic book appearances. He's canonically been through a whole shit ton, so I suggest that you scroll to the end notes to check for triggering content. I didn't put archive warnings on this because none of it is graphic, but there's a lot that I mention in passing.
> 
> Also I'm fudging some comics canon as far as locations and timelines go because reasons.

Upon his rescue, Christian Frost became a victim to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

Not by most, no.

By two.

His sister Emma, and – well. Fine. She always did know him best. During their time apart, she transformed into a near-unrecognizable version of herself, but he saw flashes of her younger self when she interacted with her students, shedding furious armor to embrace children as lost as they once were.

Ha. He was _still_ lost, and he knew it and Emma knew it and –

Iceman. Bobby Drake. The X-Man Emma enlisted to help pull Christian out of his own mind and face his terrifying new power.

Bobby Drake, who’d been closeted for an absurd amount of time, so closed off that he didn’t admit his sexuality to himself until he was well into his adulthood. He may have been in his early thirties, but make no mistake, Bobby Drake was, for all intents and purposes, a baby gay.

Christian, conversely, knew for as long as he could remember that he liked boys. The first time he said as much he couldn’t have been more than five or six – the memory was hazy; all he recalled was that he said it to his mother. She closed her fist around his arm and tugged him to a corner of the music room behind the gleaming grand piano where his teacher would meet them in mere minutes.

“Christian, you can’t say that,” she whispered.

“You’re hurting me,” he complained, and snatched his arm out of her grip.

She looked a little remorseful for a moment, but then she remembered to be angry. “It’s not right to like boys; do you hear me, Christian Frost?”

“But Felix is cool! He knows sign language and I like his hair.”

Mom hit him across the face. “Absolutely not. You will not talk that way in this house. Do you understand? You’re lucky that you didn’t say this in front of your father. You can _never_ tell your father.”

What Christian came to understand was that he shouldn’t tell anybody.

He learned he shouldn’t tell, but as with most things in the Frost family, as long as he pretended to be doing what was expected of him, his family didn’t look beyond appearances. He did well in school and used the correct forks at dinner and took girls with him to school dances.

He also smoked weed under the bleachers, snuck out with Emma to eat greasy pizza at dark dives, and kissed boys.

When he hit puberty, a heavy kind of fog settled in Christian’s brain. He was tired and sad but he pretended not to be, like he pretended not to be gay. He saw his reflection and didn’t feel real. Sometimes he dug his nails into the insides of his arms and scratched so that he might feel something – _anything_. Father bore down on them more and more. Emma went to boarding school but didn’t board, and selfishly Christian liked that Winston Frost wouldn’t let Emma sleep at her school like the rest of the girls, because he wanted his only sane sibling by his side.

Those years in between then and now were a terrifying blur that made his throat clog at the notion. Mousy, stick-limbed Emma came to visit him in the hospital after he tried to hang himself, after she _found him like that_ , and everything after that was a terror of drugs and electric shocks and ice-cold water digging like knives into his arms and legs while the doctors made him watch images of men kissing. If they hurt him while he watched those pictures, he wouldn’t want it anymore. He would be cured, they told him.

And he lost his mind. He retreated so far into himself that Christian remembered almost nothing until his sister and Bobby Drake came barreling into his father’smanor and then his mind and pulled Christian into Bobby’s head instead. They found the body where Christian murdered his father and they fought the energy projection of the same man to break Christian free.

What a sick joke of a power – energy-projecting his own abusive father. He had no plans to use it.

When he slept his nightmares were clear and sharp memories of pain and doctors and drugs. The electric shocks froze his limbs and he couldn’t move, but the freezing water was like being torn apart. He knew, logically, that they things that they did to him were torture. Actual, real torture.

He decided not to linger on it.

Instead, he adopted a persona to match Emma’s new, haughty bravado. None of the X-Men or the mutant students questioned it.

Except, tragically, Bobby Drake.

He caught Christian once stopped in front of a painting of flowers in the hallway at the school. Lavender. One of the doctors that strapped him down would wear so much lavender perfume on her wrists and neck that he couldn’t smell anything else, that his head ached every time her body drew near to his. She did other things to him, too – things that weren’t spoken of even between the doctors, unless whispered. If he had sex with a woman then he would become normal, she’d told him.

Christian didn’t know how long he’d stood in front of the painting, but it must have been a very long time. His feet ached from standing in the new shoes Emma bought him.

When a cold hand closed around his forearm, Christian threw his body across the hall. His head swam and he smelled lavender and cold bored down to his bones with sawblade intensity.

“Please don’t,” he heard himself say, his voice around his head as though he were under water.

Something tugged on his sleeve, guiding him, and a door slammed and an incongruently warm voice said, “Hey, man, wherever you are, you’re not there. It’s twenty-eighteen. You’re at the Xavier Institute. Do you want me to go find Emma?”

“No!” Christian snapped, and with the cut of the word he also snapped into the present.

He found himself in a vacant classroom. The shadows of rain rivulets running down the windows echoed across empty desks, and in front of him stood – of course – Bobby Drake, irritatingly casual for somebody claiming to be a school instructor. He wore jeans with holes in the knees and a well-loved gray sweatshirt, his caramel-brown hair falling over one slightly-panicked blue eye.

“Oh, Jesus,” Christian said. He rubbed a hand over his face.

“It’s okay,” Bobby assured him. He reached out to touch Christian’s arm, but when Christian flinched back into the wall, he withdrew. Still, he soothed, “Listen, I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that people around here aren’t strangers to PTSD. You’re not alone, man.”

“I certainly fucking hope that I am,” Christian indignantly replied. “I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. Thank you for your help. Goodbye.”

He straightened his shirt, pushed his blond hair out of his face, whisked the classroom door open, and strode away.

Bobby followed him, jogging to catch up, and said, “Hey! Hold on a second –”

“I said: _thank you for your help. Goodbye_ ,” Christian emphasized. He didn’t yell like he wanted to – students had begun to mill around as they broke for lunch and he would sooner kill himself than make a scene – and he didn’t run full-tilt away like he wanted to, either. Instead, he briskly walked away until he was blessedly alone in an empty hallway.

Then he ran. Christian ran until his lungs burned and threw himself bodily into the roomy quarters his sister had set him up in. She’d bought him a new piano last week. It was lovely, though it looked strange in the place that he’d begun to decorate to suit the secret parts of himself, the scraps leftover after all the destruction that had been wreaked upon them.

Christian sunk to the plush carpet beneath the framed poster of an indie band he liked in his old life. He still liked them, but listening to their songs made him ache for the kid he used to be. He missed knowing everything and feeling like he could fight the moon.

“Christian?”

A soft knock followed a familiar voice.

“I’m busy, Emma,” he replied.

“You and I both know that you are not,” she replied through the door.

“You’re not going to go away, are you?” Christian asked.

“I don’t plan on it, no.”

Christian sighed. He didn’t have to give her permission aloud – he knew that Emma could read his mind, the resignation to being humiliated over and over again.

“I’m your sister. I’ve seen you in worse places,” Emma said. _I’ve seen you hanging from a ceiling. I’ve seen you drugged out of your mind. I’ve seen you so traumatized and afraid you didn’t realize you’d killed our father._ She didn’t say any of that, but she didn’t have to. Quietly, Emma closed the door behind her, and her ice-cold persona dropped like a bra at the end of a long day. She exhaled and sat beside him.

“Bobby said I should check on you,” his sister said, almost as gently as she spoke to her struggling students, but not quite.

“Did Bobby say why?” asked Christian.

“He said it wasn’t his right to tell me and that I ought to ask you.”

“Then you already know.”

“No, Christian, I don’t,” Emma said, unable to disguise an edge of impatience.

“ _Don’t_ lie to me. You read minds.”

“I haven’t read yours. Not for a very long time.”

“Bullshit.”

“It is not,” retorted Emma. “After everything you’ve been through, it seemed…gauche.”

“Oh,” was all that Christian managed, and then fell silent. Emma didn’t try to fill it, but let her head fall onto his shoulder, like they were wide-eyed, stupid kids all over again, and not two adult terrors.

“He makes me uncomfortable,” Christian admitted. “Bobby. I don’t like that he knows so much.”

“I could try to manipulate his memory of the –”

“No. Don’t. I just don’t understand why you chose him.”

“Because Bobby wears his heart on his sleeve,” replied Emma. “I trusted him. I still think that I made the right call. He’s respected our privacy completely. You heard me just now – he wouldn’t even tell me why I should go find you, just that I should.”

“I feel like I owe him something,” Christian said.

“I know _I_ do. He knows it, too. He’ll cash in a favor from me when he needs it.”

“I need to repay him,” Christian decided. “That’s the only way that I can stop feeling this way. I have to repay him.”

“If that’s what you feel is best,” said Emma, as though it was that simple.

Maybe it was.

But after that, Christian still couldn’t figure out what he meant to do to repay Bobby Drake for saving his life and pointedly never being a bastard about any of it. Bobby openly needled Emma over giving her his help and she bit back like a viper, but not once did Bobby lord the experience over _Christian’s_ head. He didn’t even talk to him, really. He didn’t badger Christian the way that he unabashedly badgered all his colleagues and every single student.

Time marched on. Christian watched at a distance as Bobby dated more men and without a shadow of a doubt began experimenting with them. Sometimes he thought he should be jealous, and maybe he was. What he didn’t know was whether he was jealous of Bobby’s easy, boyish charisma and the men that it attracted, or jealous of those men that got sucked in Bobby Drake’s orbit.

He decided he didn’t want to find out, and when Emma offered a place for Christian at her manor, something plush but nothing like their childhood home, he accepted readily.

He and Emma were outcasts among the X-Men. They didn’t trust Emma, even if she trusted them, and by extension, no one trusted Christian. That was fine. He didn’t need to be liked, and he didn’t need to be trusted.

But he still owed Bobby for the small matter of saving his life.

That sentiment itched at the back of Christian’s mind as he spent his days reading and playing his piano and pretending that he was recovered from several missing years of his life, until one evening, Emma announced, “Bobby’s having a birthday party.”

Christian cocked a brow.

“Are we invited?” he asked.

Emma swirled her wine in its glass, sipped, and said, “I’m certainly not. Nobody said anything about whether or not you were, though. Perhaps you could give him a birthday present. Ease your conscience.”

“I don’t even know what I would get him,” Christian said flatly, “especially as I’m not invited.”

“Well. I wouldn’t say that,” Emma said, and against Christian’s thigh, his phone buzzed. “That’s the address of the party, if you decide to go.”

His sister knew him too well.

And he finally had an idea for repayment.

The night of the party, Christian dressed in soft, expensive clothes – a cream turtleneck and camel-colored suit jacket. He styled his hair and pretended he wasn’t paying any extra attention to the way that he looked. When he arrived at the bar, most of Bobby’s birthday guests were already there, but Bobby himself was not.

Christian ordered a double espresso under the heat of several stares and decided he would rather wait outside in the cold than be subject to the attention for even a moment longer. He collected his espresso and stowed himself just to the right of the door.

No more than thirty seconds later, three figures appeared in the sky: Bobby, encased in his ice form, some kind of similarly cloaked ice wizard, and Jean Grey.

“Drake,” Christian said, when Bobby drew near. “I need a moment.”

Bobby’s expression betrayed nothing, but he called back to Jean, “Go on in. I’ll catch up with you in a sec.”

Jean and the shifty ice wizard both eyed Christian, but entered the establishment. As Bobby’s ice form melted away, it left the man himself in jeans and a charmingly worn red jacket.

“I gather it’s your birthday,” remarked Christian. “Emma had only told me that I’d find you here.”

“Your sister is cute like that, with her half-truths.”

“I’m not wanted; I get it. I’ll be quick.”

Without ceremony, Christian brandished the check. He’d tacked on an extra zero at the end, just to be sure he’d written enough gratitude into the number.

“What’s this?” asked Bobby.

“A thank you. My father’s estate granted me some liberties with how to divest funds,” Christian told him, and on a whim, he blurted honesty: “Emma is used to living in other people’s heads. All I know is mine. When I was in your mind…you felt my emptiness, but…you filled that void with something Em couldn’t show me herself. Hope.”

Bobby held the check in his hand but didn’t speak. Perhaps he hadn’t expected Christian to actually address the manner in which Bobby had rescued him: through the use of his own silly, optimistic Iceman mind.

“Money’s a great liberator. Use this to make whatever life you want for yourself,” he decided to go on. More fool him. “Thanks for helping me not kill myself.”

**

Bobby gave every last cent of the money away, that unbelievable asshole.

**

When Christian first stepped foot on Krakoa, he could not believe his eyes. Mutants from all walks of life were living in paradise, safe at last from the worldwide hatred of their kind. If he were his younger self, he would have let himself get lost to it. He would have partied as well as the rest of them, drinking and laughing and finding somebody to fool around with in a dark corner someplace.

He thought perhaps he wouldn’t be welcome to do as much – being a Frost was a black mark against him – but as he squinted through the throngs of mutants, he realized that X-Men were not the only mutants on this island. There were Morlocks. There was the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. There was Magneto, Apocalypse – it didn’t matter. They were all here together as one people.

The black mark of the surname Frost was meaningless on Krakoa.

That was as much as curse as it was a blessing. Being a natural outcast gave Christian an excuse to isolate himself. His sister’s reputation preceded her so far that everyone assumed that Christian thought other mutants beneath him, and rather than fight the notion, he clung to it so that people would leave him alone.

But this was a new dawn for mutants, even mutants with the shitty ability to energy project their abusive father.

No one cared anymore that after Christian came Frost.

One night, Christian hovered at the edge of the revelry and overheard Bobby’s voice someplace referring to the conception of Krakoa as _mutie gras_ and he snorted despite himself. He still didn’t join, but stuck to the crust, away from prying eyes.

Emma, as she seemed always to, held a position of power in Krakoa, and he merrily rode her coattails into an actual palace – the White Palace. Christian could still isolate, but he found that he didn’t always want to – this was as close to an island vacation as he’d been since before the suicide attempt and the drug addiction and the conversion therapy, all those years lost in echoing space inside his head.

Christian resolved to reinvent himself. Inside Emma’s palace, over the sink in his bedroom, he shaved his head. When he blinked at his new reflection in the mirror, he almost couldn’t believe the difference a couple inches of hair had made – his old haircut was a remnant of his wealth, the kind of style that screamed an enormous pricetag. His new buzz was uneven from his unskilled hands, but rather than look like a man that might be having a minor mental breakdown, he looked a little like the punkish men he’d admired as a teenager.

Christian looked a little bit more like himself.

He felt pounds lighter when he strode out from his bedroom to the parlor. Emma’s brows rose at the sight of his shaved head.

“Tell me you’re going to get that fixed,” she said blandly.

“Nope,” Christian answered, almost giddy. “It’s awful and I love it. I’m a little old for a quarter-life crisis and a little young for a midlife crisis so I’ve decided that I’m not having a crisis at all.”

And in nothing but his boxer briefs, slippers, and a silk robe that fell to mid-thigh, Christian strode from the palace toward the beach.

“Christian!” Emma protested. “Where are you going? You’re not even dressed.”

“We live on a beach now,” Christian said, without glancing behind him. “In a palace. If I want to leave my palace in my underwear, then by God, I’m going to do it.”

Their father would have told Christian he’d gone insane. He would have dosed him with drugs and he would have thrown him into violent therapy to get rid of something that wasn’t even wrong.

Emma must have seen some tension in him, must have sensed it in him, even though she never, ever went in his head, because she said, “Well, all right. Do what you like. We’re finally safe to do that, I suppose.”

Christian turned his head to flash Emma a smile. “You’re damn right, kid.”

“I am not a child.”

“Maybe. But you’ll always be my little sister.”

Emma made a noise of exasperation, but she didn’t argue with him.

Christian trekked all the way down from the palace to the Krakoan shore. The air smelled different here. Greener and cleaner, with the salt of the sea a gentle undertone. He breathed it in, kicked his slippers off of his feet, and walked from the flora and fauna to the sand. It was warm. His feet sunk in as he stepped forward.

In the distance, some airborne mutants played with each other, winged or crackling with energy or simply hovering. The _freedom_ – the lack of fear – had Christian’s face falling slack with a smile.

He stopped at the edge of the water. The old fear of the freezing water they used in that horrible place to hurt him resurfaced. He knew, logically, that the sea wasn’t even remotely the same thing – Christian felt silly even associating the two, but even in the arms of Krakoa he couldn’t stop having nightmares altogether.

“Holy shit. Frost, is that you?”

Christian jerked his attention back.

“Oh,” he said, because Bobby Drake was behind him in nothing but the absolute smallest blue speedo known to mutantkind, and cheap foam flip-flops.

“Nice haircut,” he remarked, and then joked, “Do it yourself?”

“Yes. I did, actually.”

“Huh.”

“I feel like myself here,” Christian told him. “The past doesn’t matter here. Except when it does, I suppose.”

Bobby sidled up to his side. He didn’t stand too close, but certainly closer than strictly necessary – leaving maybe five or six inches of space between them. “What does that mean?”

Bobby’s eyes searched him – no, well, wait. That wasn’t searching or scrutinizing at all.

Christian was being checked out.

He couldn’t remember the last time he noticed somebody doing that.

The need to keep up appearances probably should have surfaced, but nothing stirred as Christian sifted through his brain for the appropriate amount of shame. Krakoa didn’t play by the same rules as humanity, and it certainly didn’t play by the rules of Winston Frost.

“If I tell you something horrible, will you be mad at me?” Christian queried.

Bobby cocked a brow.

“I don’t want to ruin the mood, is what I’m saying.”

“I’m the one that asked what you meant,” Bobby pointed out.

Christian chewed on his lower lip for half a second. His mother used to snap at him for doing that. “Is the water cold?” he asked.

Bobby shrugged a shoulder. “You gotta know I got no way of answering that, dude.”

“I’m afraid of cold water,” admitted Christian. Who cared? He was on the shore of a living island in his underwear and silk robe. Nothing mattered.

“So? Lots of people don’t like cold water.”

Christian fixed an amused look on Bobby. “This is where I’m going to tell you something horrible,” he said, “so if you’ve changed your mind about hearing it, you can always run back and play with the other mutants."

“Nah. I’m listening."

“My father sent me to conversion therapy,” Christian said. He didn’t bother sugarcoating the matter. “It’s a long, sordid tale leading up to that point, but suffice it to say, that was all also awful. Do you know much about conversion therapy?”

“About as much as anybody,” Bobby answered, the teasing light gone from his face.

“Then you can fill in some of the blanks,” said Christian. “I suppose your mutation means you don’t know much about the pain you feel when you’re submerged in freezing water, but it’s beyond anything I can describe. There are plenty of things they did that my brain could latch onto, but mostly it’s freezing water and my father. Even so. I want to try walking in. I don’t think I can, but I want to.”

Bobby stuck out his hand. “I’ll go with you, then,” he said, matter-of-fact.

Christian stared at his outstretched hand.

He must have waited for too long, because Bobby began to withdraw with a soft, “Or not –”

But Christian snatched his hand. Bobby’s fingers were cold, but he expected that.

“That’s more like it,” Bobby said. “‘Ice’ job, Christian.”

“Oh, good God,” managed Christian, unable to suppress a roll of his eyes. Jubilee kept a jar for this man labeled ‘CLUNKY DAD JOKES’ that Bobby put money into every time she caught him at it. Christian considered ratting him out for this one.

Bobby squeezed his hand. “I’ll go first,” he offered. He kicked off his ugly foam flip-flops, and without letting go, he backed into the edge of the water, only just enough for the tide to run up over Bobby’s ankles and feet. “Ready?”

A knot of fear clogged Christian’s throat, but he nodded. Bobby backed up one more step, and then another, and another, gently pulling Christian along with him.

Christian’s whole body tensed when the cool water lapped against the tops of his bare feet.

“Bad?” Bobby said.

“Nuh – no. I don’t think so,” Christian said.

Because there was somebody holding his hand, waiting right there to pull him out if he needed it. On a whim, he took a step of his own volition, but he tripped. For a brief, searing second of terror, he thought he was going to fall face-first into a cold body of water, but Bobby caught him. “Fuck,” Bobby said. “I gotcha. You all good?”

Christian, cheek pressed to Bobby’s pecs, replied, “You know, I think I’m doing quite well down here.”

Bobby started laughing.

“You’re laughing at me,” Christian accused, but he didn’t move his face. In fact, he entertained a nanosecond-long fantasy about what his face might feel like pressed to this same spot but in a more horizontal position.

“I’m laughing at the way this is going down,” Bobby said through a grin. He pulled Christian upright, and they were close now.

Very close.

Nose to nose close.

“I haven’t been with anyone since…” Christian gulped in a breath of air. “Since then.”

“Well, think of it this way: I don’t have enough experience with guys to determine if you’re damaged in the sack.”

This time, Christian laughed. There was something in the Krakoan air that simply made him act more like himself, he decided. For the first time in a long time, he thought he might be able to relearn liking himself. He could start by spending time with somebody that didn’t treat him like a little glass bauble, the way that Emma sometimes did – not that she realized she was doing it.

Christian kissed Bobby.

Bobby kissed back.

His skin was cool, but not cold, and the inside of his mouth wasn’t cold at all. He tasted a little bit like booze but mostly like skin. Whatever that combination was, it made Christian lean in as far as he could. He let go of Bobby’s hand to put his fingers in Bobby’s hair. He tugged a little bit, and Bobby made this _noise –_

Christian drew back a quarter of an inch. “I’m sorry – are you _into_ that?”

“You’re the one that did it! You’re not allowed to make fun of me.”

“I assure you that I am not making fun of you,” Christian murmured, and did it again.

Bobby shivered. Bobby Drake – Iceman. _Iceman_ shivered.

“Do you know what you do like?” asked Christian.

“Ungh,” Bobby managed. “Definitely that. Some other stuff that I will not be saying within earshot of the kids that are watching us from the trees. Would it be awkward if I asked you to take me to your palace?"

“Not awkward at all,” Christian assured him.

Especially since, if Christian made his thoughts especially loud, his sister wouldn’t have any choice but to hear he needed some space for a few hours.

“I can get us there really, really fast if you want,” Bobby offered, “but there’s definitely ice involved.”

Christian spared a moment to think about it. He was already standing mid-calf in cold water. Bobby’s cold hands had already caught him around the waist. His mouth moved before his brain did, saying, “I trust you,” and Christian found that he meant those words.

A gentle smile curved Bobby’s mouth up at the corners just barely, but Christian’s heart thudded against his chest.

“Right on,” Bobby said, and shifted his grip on Christian so that his arm locked around the small of his back. As he held him, his body changed, ice encasing his limbs and his head. He was freezing to the touch, and it should have bothered Christian, but Bobby still had the same smile under the layer of ice. Christian found that he liked that smile enough to make him warm.

A wave of ice lifted them into the air, and Bobby skated them through the sky and up the cliff to the White Palace, its towering, iridescent crystal piercing from the forested hillside. Christian couldn’t have made up living in something like it in his wildest dreams. He used to read fantasy novels as a boy – he had to hide them under his mattress because his father said that genre fiction wasn’t appropriate reading for a Frost. Only the classics would do, and only the classics that Winston Frost approved of, a horrifically boring slate of old white men.

The White Palace made Christian feel like he was thirteen, living in one of the fantasy novels he read under his covers at night – with a flashlight. That was old-fashioned, now.

“There,” Christian said, and pointed to an opening between two shoots of glossy crystal.

Bobby landed on Christian’s balcony and hopped down with a little smirk on his face.

“Kiss me again?” he suggested, ice melting away from his handsome face.

Christian obliged. He guided Bobby into his bedroom, realizing now what a terribly personal choice he was making in doing so. He didn’t even let Emma in his bedroom – his parlor, maybe, but not where he slept. He kept an ornate bookcase of all the fantasy books he had never been allowed to have, and though they were framed and pressed under gleaming panels of glass, he’d hung posters of all of the indie and punk bands he listened to as a teenager, his CD collection tucked under folded slacks and pressed button-downs. He kept a vanity full of cosmetics – another forbidden collection from his youth. Mascara and lip tint suited him.

Bobby whistled out a low note. “I don’t know what I expected,” he said, “but it wasn’t this.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“I’m really not,” replied Bobby. “I just thought there would be a few more crystal chandeliers.” His eyes flicked to the ceiling at an offending light fixture.

“Sorry to disappoint you. I only have the one.”

Without another word to stall, Christian laced his hand in Bobby’s and pulled him toward his bed. This piece might be what Bobby expected from him: a massive mattress in a gold baroque frame, sheer panels of fabric creating a whimsical canopy. He pushed Bobby onto his back and ignored the jolt of nerves that jump-started his heart before he crawled over him.

Christian boxed Bobby in with his limbs and kissed him again. Harder, this time. With more promise.

“How do you like it?” Christian asked quietly, their lips ghosting together.

“Honestly?”

“Yes, Bobby, honestly.”

The apples of Bobby’s cheeks went charmingly pink. “On, um. I like being on bottom. I’ve only – I haven’t done a whole lot, mostly one-night stands, but uh…I know for sure I like that.”

“Well, good. I can make that happen.”

In short order, Christian dropped his robe from his shoulders, retrieved the lubricant he kept in his bedside table (gold baroque – to match), and pulled Bobby’s obscene swimsuit off his body.

This man was a masterpiece. He clearly spent time making his body look good. Well-muscled arms dipped down to the impressive pecs that Christian had his face pressed to on the shore, and his body narrowed down to a trim waist. He shaved, and his ass was a work of art. Bobby could have exaggerated his body when he encased it in his ice form, but no – he really was built like that.

“Are you gonna do something?” Bobby whispered. “Maybe, like, get naked. For example.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course."

Christian was nothing to sniff at, but he wasn’t as muscled as Bobby. He, like his sister, was slender. He and Emma shared a similar stage in their youth in which they were nothing but bone. As an adult man, he had more mass to him, but nothing compared to the bombshell on the sheets below him.

Christian took his time with Bobby. He kissed him and petted him, all slick kisses and fingers. He drew it out for both their sakes: Christian hadn’t done this in an embarrassingly long amount of time, and Bobby deserved somebody paying attention to him like the artwork that he was, not a quick and dirty one night stand. Those could be nice, but this was not that. Not for either of them.

When Christian slid inside Bobby’s body, Bobby locked his legs around his waist and let out a happy sigh. They kissed again, and then some more, rolling slowly into another. The pressure of tight warmth around him sent Christian flying, and he muffled a surprised noise in Bobby’s mouth.

Bobby gasped when Christian pulled out and swallowed him down in one fluid movement. His hands scrabbled for something to hold onto, palms running over Christian’s newly shaved head. Remembering how to do this didn’t take Christian quite as long as he expected it to – perhaps giving blowjobs was like riding bicycles. One never quite forgot.

In a matter of minutes, Bobby came in his mouth. He was much more liberal with the noises that he made than Christian, and they echoed in the yawning crystal cavern that was Christian’s bedroom.

“Wow,” Bobby remarked, when Christian dropped down alongside him.

“Good?”

“I feel like I shoulda hit on you sooner.”

“I feel like you might not have been ready for that,” Christian countered.

A soft huff escaped Bobby, and his head lolled onto Christian’s shoulder. “Probably not,” he agreed mildly. They were quiet together for a beat, and then Bobby asked, “You thought about picking out your true name?”

“Not really,” admitted Christian. “I energy-project my abusive father. I don’t think there’s a clever name for that.”

“Maybe you can energy-project more than just him.”

“I’m frankly afraid to try that, Bobby.”

Bobby hummed. “That’s fair.” He applied his lips to Christian’s neck, a soft peck of a thing, and said, “M’gonna sleep here. Too comfy to move.”

“That’s fine. Stay as long as you’d like.”

True to his word, Bobby fell asleep, his head nestled against Christian’s shoulder, his mouth open and slack. Christian didn’t sleep. He didn’t want to risk having a nightmare while he was naked and tucked up against Bobby Drake, so instead, he watched Bobby’s chest rise and fall.

A selfish, silly notion surfaced as he did. Christian didn’t want anyone else to have this man. He wanted Bobby all to himself. Perhaps that was possessive and cruel, but for once, he’d found a slice of something good for himself. He could keep his fantasy books and his band posters and his mascara.

Perhaps he could keep Bobby Drake too.

**Author's Note:**

> Christian reflects on memories of a suicide attempt, self-harm, drug abuse, depression, conversion therapy/torture, and rape. Most of this is canon for his backstory but some is my own speculation. 
> 
> That said, none of these things are really The Point here.
> 
> OKAY SO LIKE
> 
> I wrote this to bridge Uncanny X-Men: Winter's End to the current state of affairs between Christian and Bobby in the Marauders comics. There's this kinda odd shift in Christian's character between then and now and I've decided to call it recovery. The conversation that happens on Bobby's birthday is 100% canon -- I took that dialogue directly from Uncanny X-Men: Winter's End. I also refer in here to events in the 2003 Emma Frost title series, as well as the 2018 Iceman five-issue miniseries.
> 
> ALSO
> 
> Marvel, on GOD, if you make Christian Frost a whole-ass villain, I am throwing hands. There's some weird tonal shift in his character from who he originally was to who he is in current canon and I just want them to stay true to some of his original characterization pls Marvel I know you're not reading this but cut me a break I beg you
> 
> If you'd like to read/watch me lose my shit about comics feel free to follow me on twitter @thepinupchemist or on tiktok @scarlettshazam.


End file.
